Week+2

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The pictures chosen for the Animoto reflect the different kinds of scholarly research available to students and the research tools to sort and organize the information. I included research resources such as Google Scholar, Yahoo! Research, the US Library of Congress and online databases such as EBSCO Host and JSTOR. I included a portion on aggregators which identified the RSS symbol and showed an example of Google Reader. Another organizational tool for research is the the social bookmarking site which was displayed as Diigo. This Animoto would be used in tandem with teacher lesson on researching tools and the meaning behind each photo displayed. Evaluation of Web 2.0 Tools 1. Planbookedu.com Planbookedu is a site that helps teachers to organize their lesson plans in matter that makes them accessible anywhere with an internet connection. Each lesson plan is fully customizable and they can be exported to Microsoft Word, PDF files and other modes to increase shareability. This service has FREE component but a premium version is also available for $25 per year for teachers. The site loaded very quickly and there were no advertisements seen. The navigation of the site seems very simple and there would be no training associated with this site due to its ease of learning for most users. I would use this website in my teaching to organize my lesson plans wherever I am that has internet access. It is a great tool for modern teachers on the go. I'd give this website a perfect score! 2. Quizinator.com Quizantor is an awesome, no-cost resource for teachers to create, organize and sort their quizzes, tests, worksheets and so much more! The site is advertisement-free and allows educators to save and update questions in a variety of different forms (short answers, multiple choice, true/false, and yes/no). It allows for questions to be assigned values and grouped into different categories (subject, difficulty, answer type and key words). This site is not only useful for making quizzes and exams but also for worksheets and study sheets. As an educator, I would use this tool to create helpful handouts for tests or quizzes and organize questions used beyond tests such as for classroom or web discussion. The ability to save and update questions is a wonderful resource for teachers to be able to create their own bank of questions that they can build and improve year after year. This site is easy to use and I found no difficulty with any of the aspects of this site. This website also gets a perfect score! 3. Tikatok.com Tikatok is a website through Barnes & Noble which helps students become published authors. The site offers students a ways to create their own books with customized covers, fonts and pictures. In a high school class, this could be used for publishing students' poems, short stories or other pieces of creative writing. There is bulk discount for educators in a variety of ways: 25 hardcover books for $8 each or $3 each for 25 digital download copies for a class filled with technology natives. Tikatok could be used in numerous ways to give students a way to see their work get published. This site loaded quickly, had no advertisements and seemed pretty easy to use. Using the Web 2.0 Rubric, this site gets a perfect score of 28! 4. Engrade.com Engrade.com is by far my favorite Web 2.0 tool that I have come across! The site is completely free and very easy to use. It is a virtual grade book that also has a number of other features such as space to store and share wikis, lesson plans, online quizzes and flash cards. This site records and calculates grades and assignments with capabilities to customize the grading scale and drop the lowest grade. Each student receives an ID number assigned to them in order to keep grades private to only the student and his/her parents. Engrade also provides an outlet for educators to privately message students and parents about progress in any given course. Since it is web-based, students and parents can have access to grades and information 24/7. I am excited to use this website in the future for my classroom and I would give it a more than perfect score, if it were possible! 5. Sweetsearch.com Sweetsearch.com is a search engine that has been evaluated and approved by researchers, educators and librarians. It offers great educational results for each search rendered. Resources like the Library of Congress, PBS and tons of books returned as answers to my searches. This site seems like a great place for students to come for safer searching than on Google or other public search engines with more variety in high-quality research tools. During my searches, I saw no advertisements and the site seems simple enough to use for people with prior search engine experience. I think Sweetsearch would be a great resource to any educator promoting quality research for his/her students. This site loaded quickly and was extremely easy to navigate and therefore received another perfect score on the Web 2.0 tools rubric!